TY - JOUR
T1 - Students' perceptions of terrascope, a project-based freshman learning community
AU - Lipson, Alberta
AU - Epstein, Ari W.
AU - Bras, Rafael
AU - Hodges, Kip
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to acknowledge the contributions of Debra Aczel and Ruth Weinrib, who handle the logistics of the Terrascope program and who continually work to find ways to make the students happier, more comfortable and more fulfilled. We are also grateful for the assistance of Stephen Rudolph of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who works closely with students during the spring semester, talking them through their designs and then helping bring their projects into being. We also thank Maria Shkolnik for administrative assistance. Terrascope has been generously supported through the offices of the MIT Chancellor and Provost, and much of the program’s development was made possible by MIT’s Alex and Brit D’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education. The Terrascope field trip is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
PY - 2007/8
Y1 - 2007/8
N2 - We present a descriptive case study of Terrascope, an innovative, year-long, project-based learning community at MIT. Each year, Terrascope students study a particular environmental or Earth-system problem from a multidisciplinary perspective. Terrascope includes both academic and non-academic components; this paper focuses on the academic components. The objectives of the academic subjects, and of the program as a whole, involve helping students develop their team-building, communication, problem-solving, and self-regulatory learning skills. This study focuses on cohorts of students from the first and second years of the program (2002-2003 and 2003-2004); it is based on end-of-semester surveys and focus groups, and on additional focus groups conducted when these students were upperclassmen. Students felt Terrascope helped them make significant improvements in their ability to work in teams and to take on complex, multidisciplinary problems. They felt that the program's two-semester structure gave them an opportunity to develop and nurture these skills, and that the program prepared them well for their later work at MIT. They also felt that being engaged, as freshmen, in a distinct learning community, significantly eased their transition into MIT. We describe lessons learned in the development of Terrascope and offer suggestions for other institutions planning to develop similar programs.
AB - We present a descriptive case study of Terrascope, an innovative, year-long, project-based learning community at MIT. Each year, Terrascope students study a particular environmental or Earth-system problem from a multidisciplinary perspective. Terrascope includes both academic and non-academic components; this paper focuses on the academic components. The objectives of the academic subjects, and of the program as a whole, involve helping students develop their team-building, communication, problem-solving, and self-regulatory learning skills. This study focuses on cohorts of students from the first and second years of the program (2002-2003 and 2003-2004); it is based on end-of-semester surveys and focus groups, and on additional focus groups conducted when these students were upperclassmen. Students felt Terrascope helped them make significant improvements in their ability to work in teams and to take on complex, multidisciplinary problems. They felt that the program's two-semester structure gave them an opportunity to develop and nurture these skills, and that the program prepared them well for their later work at MIT. They also felt that being engaged, as freshmen, in a distinct learning community, significantly eased their transition into MIT. We describe lessons learned in the development of Terrascope and offer suggestions for other institutions planning to develop similar programs.
KW - Assessment
KW - Environmental education
KW - Experiential learning
KW - Freshman
KW - Interdisciplinary learning
KW - Project-based learning
KW - Self-directed learning
KW - Teamwork
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U2 - 10.1007/s10956-007-9046-6
DO - 10.1007/s10956-007-9046-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:35148823759
SN - 1059-0145
VL - 16
SP - 349
EP - 364
JO - Journal of Science Education and Technology
JF - Journal of Science Education and Technology
IS - 4
ER -